Boeing 737 catches fire and skids off the runway at a Senegal airport, injuring 10 people
DAKAR, Senegal — A Boeing 737 plane carrying 85 people skidded off a runway at the airport in Senegal’s capital, injuring 10 people, according to the transport minister, an airline safety group and video from a passenger that showed the aircraft on fire.
“Our plane just caught fire,” Malian musician Cheick Siriman Sissoko wrote in a post on Facebook that showed passengers jumping down the emergency slides at night as flames engulfed one side of the aircraft at the airport in Dakar. In the background, people can be heard screaming.
Transport Minister El Malick Ndiaye said the Air Senegal flight operated by TransAir was headed to Bamako, in neighboring Mali, late Wednesday with 79 passengers, two pilots and four cabin crew members. The airport reopened Thursday morning after closing overnight.
The injured were being treated at a hospital, while the others were taken to a hotel to rest. Boeing referred a request for comment to the airline.
On Thursday, 190 people were safely evacuated from a plane in Turkey after one of its tires burst during landing at a southern airport, Turkey’s transportation ministry said.
A report from the NTSB said the Ontario-bound Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane was missing bolts when its door plug blew out in midair.
The company has been under intense pressure since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight bound for Southern California in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. The Federal Aviation Administration in February gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to fix quality problems and meet safety standards for building planes.
The incident has raised scrutiny of Boeing to the highest level since two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. About a dozen relatives of passengers who died in the second crash have been pushing the U.S. government to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement.
In April, a Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, testified at a congressional hearing that the company had taken manufacturing shortcuts to turn out 787s as quickly as possible that could lead to jetliners breaking apart.
The Aviation Safety Network, which tracks airline accidents, described the Air Senegal plane that caught fire as a Boeing 737-38J.
The network published photos on the social media platform X of the damaged plane in a grassy field, surrounded by fire suppressant foam. The photos appear to show one engine had broken apart and a wing was damaged.
The Aviation Safety Network is part of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group that aims to promote safe air travel and tracks accidents.
Donati writes for the Associated Press.
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